


A Mother Doesn't Make a Family

by TonySawicki



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: AngelBros - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9178477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TonySawicki/pseuds/TonySawicki
Summary: Helena and Tony share a moment on the subject of mothers





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Orphan Black or anything like it.  
> This is just a little something I was thinking about. It's not much and I don't know if it's really all right, but I haven't done much with these folks lately so here it is anyway.  
> Love to you all, hope your year's off to a good start!

Helena slid the door of Felix’s loft closed, effectively shutting in the music and chattering behind her. She walked into the hall and found Tony right where she expected him, sitting on the top step of the stairs, staring vaguely into the space ahead of him, a beer half-forgotten in his hand. She came silently to sit beside him, in her practiced and careful way, approaching him as softly as she would any animal she was hunting.

He didn’t look over when she sat down and she didn't try to get his attention, just letting them sit for a while, the bass from the loft pulsing gently as the only sound. After several long minutes, Tony’s phone vibrated and Helena looked down at where it lay on the step next to his feet, expecting him to pick it up. Instead he suddenly lashed out with his boot, sending the phone clattering down the stairs, skidding to a halt on the next landing. The quiet resumed but there was a tension in Tony’s body that hadn’t been there before and Helena placed a soothing hand on his arm, though she still didn’t say anything.

Finally he took a swig from his beer and said, as if Helena had asked, “It’s my cousin.”

Helena waited for him to go on. She wasn’t in any hurry.

“She won’t stop texting me. I don’t know how she even got my number.” He shook his head, a mirthless smile crossing his face. “Nah, I do. She got it from my ex, I’d bet anything. Not that I have anything to bet.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Helena tilted her head towards him. “She is your family?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Tony said shortly.

Helena nodded thoughtfully. 

“She keeps saying I should call my mom, that I _have_ to. ‘Whatever you may think of her, in the end she’s still your mother.’” He snorted. “She doesn’t see me as her son; how is it that she’s my mother?”

Helena looked at him sadly. “A mother should support her child through anything.”

“No argument from me,” Tony said, staring into space again.

There was a long pause before Helena said, “I killed my mother.”

Tony looked at her before slowly nodding. “What happened?”

Helena closed her eyes, memories cascading roughly over her. “I… resented her,” she said in a strained voice. Images and sound bytes were piling onto her mind more quickly than she could handle. 

_What happened to you, Helena?_

Darkness, tangible, thick darkness that you could dig your hands through and never get closer to the light.

_You’re nothing to me!_

Blood, on her hands, so much of it, but she can’t tell if it’s hers or not. Blood pooling around her feet. The rush of relief following the sharp pain across her shoulder blade, the pain she deserves, the pain that makes her _better_ than the others.

_What happened to you?_

_What happened to you??_

The voices started overlapping and Helena was jerked back into the present by Tony’s hand on hers. She opened her eyes, slowly regulating her breathing. At length, she said, “She gave me to the people… who made me the way I am. I don’t know what happened to me, but I know it was because of her. She let me become… this way.” She brought one hand unconsciously to her shoulder, fingers running over her sweater, sensing the spot where the scars began.

Tony shrugged, giving her a half-smile. “You’re not so bad.”

“I killed my mother,” Helena reminded him.

“Well.”

“Sarah—she is my sestra, you know this. We shared the same womb, two babies together,” Helena said. “She was upset.”

Tony grimaced before raising his beer to his lips again. “I can see how she might be.”

“I could not,” Helena said, her brow creasing. “We could have been together. Our mother ripped us apart, tried to break our connection. I was missing part of me.” Her jaw clenched as she fought to keep from breaking down. “Sarah was missing me, too, but when I brought us together… She wanted our mother. Our mother who abandoned us, abandoned _her_. Kept us apart. But she wanted her more than she wanted me.” Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she balled her fists on her knees. “I still don’t understand,” she whispered.

Tony’s arm was tight around her shoulders before she knew it, his beer set aside on the step. “She didn’t know what she was missing,” he said. “She thought the void she felt was not knowing her mom because she didn’t know she had a sister. Now that she knows, you think she’d let you go again? Not a chance.” He pulled her closer. “Sometimes the world breaks us apart, but if we’re supposed to be together, we find each other again. In the end, we choose our families, Blondie. ’S’why I’m here with you, blowing off my cousin. It took Sarah a while; she had her own shit, different from yours but it’s still a part of her. She fought to get you back though. When she had the choice, she _chose_ you to be part of her family.”

Helena wiped her face on his shoulder and pulled back to look at his face, so similar to her own and different in more ways than she could describe. “We make a family. All of us.”

“Right,” Tony grinned. “I’d say maybe don’t kill any more of her moms though.”

“That is good advice.”


End file.
